liquid courage
by Evelynhunters
Summary: here's a reason why Pam Beasley doesn't get drunk, because her voice goes high and her face gets flushed and she does exceptionally brave and stupid things.
1. Chapter 1

11/26/16

Office: liquid courage

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Liquid Courage (or stupidity, which ever works)

By: Evelynhunters

There's a reason why Pam Beasley doesn't get drunk, because her voice goes high and her face gets flushed and she does exceptionally brave and stupid things. The last time she got drunk

There is a reason why Pam Beasley doesn't get drunk, but she can't seem to recall it as she chugs another drink down.

The last time she had gotten this drunk was when she broke it off with Roy, and the time before had been after a party where something she's not proud of happened. The time before that was when she was rejected by art school. And the time before that had been when her mom died, and the times before that had been too young, too stupid, too... high school. She wouldn't call herself an alcoholic with only two handfuls of experiences, but she's almost scared by how quickly she gets used to the sting of the alcohol and how familiar she was with the sticky, clear bar counter.

It was probably stupid for her to get upset over things so small, minuscule in the wide set of things, but the fact that only her class's teaching assistant ( not even her digital art design teacher, but her weird nature environmental class that she took for extra credit's teaching assistant) went to her art show was like a punch to the stomach. She remembers debating whether to call Jim and disrupt his time spent with perfect, brilliant, prettier-than-Pam Karen, but the bitterness on her tongue when the call went to voicemail struggled to get words out of her mouth.

And Karen, perfect, brilliant Karen, was the apple of Jim's eye. Perfect, brilliant Karen and Jim met in said stupid nature environmental class when he had transferred after the... thing. Perfect, brilliant Karen who was so nice and kind and easy to talk to when she and Pam first met. Perfect, brilliant Karen with her pretty face and her smiles and her sarcastic attitude and her European last name and her work pants because she didn't like dresses and-

Agh. She needs more alcohol.

Besides, it's not like she had hung over Jim for forever. She tries seeing some other guys, moving on like Jim had so easily done. She went on a few dates with some social science major named Connor, another guy named Jake. Hell, she thinks she might've drunkenly hooked up with Roy even after their breakup.

But sometimes it drove her crazy when she thinks about all this. If she had broke it off with Roy earlier, would she and Jim be having their happy ending? If she hadn't said no to Jim, would perfect, brilliant Karen and him be dating? If she had kissed him back, would Jim talk to her again?

At times when she thinks about the 'what if's', she gets familiar with the bottom of her cup.

"You're drunk, Pam, " he says exasperatedly. A sigh is underlined in his sentence as he take in the girl with four cups in front of her. It's at times like these he wonders why he puts up with this stubborn, crazy, nerdy little weirdo that he's absolutely not in love with.

She looks at him owlishly, "I'm not drunk. And you're not real. I know you're not real, because the Jim I know doesn't come to random bars."

They do when girls they liked call them and not respond to their voice mail forcing them to track their phones he thinks fleetingly before she starts again.

"I know you're not real because when I'm drunk my imagination likes to torture me." She says this almost decisively, counting the facts off her head.

"I'm real, and you're drunk." He says to her almost forcefully, looking into her eyes. "Pam, I haven't seen you drunk since-" he stops suddenly, because it brings up a memory of an almost-kiss and it's a memory he doesn't want to remember and he was almost sure she doesn't want to remember, too.

"You know, if you were real, which I know you're not, I should be really mad at you." She slurs out the sentence, pointing a shaky finger in his direction. "You didn't come to my art show," she hisses pointedly in his direction as she counts the other names off her fingers, "neither did Meredith, or Dwight, or Angela, or Stanley, or Kelly, or Phyllis."

Her eyes are glossy as she stare into his. "Do you know who came? Michael. Michael was the only person who came!" She laughs loudly and out of control, barely able to finish her sentence. "Michael was the only one there and he was the only person who liked my art!"

His eyes widen at the scene in front of him. "Shit! I'm so sorry, Pam, but I forgot." He winced at his cliché answer. "I was with-"

"Perfect, brilliant, pretty Karen. I know." She deadpans in an exasperated way he almost doubts if she was really drunk or not. She laughs again, but much more bitter. "You know what I hate about this, not-real-Jim? I miss hanging out with you. Casual conversations. I miss being able to talk to you. We can't even do that anymore." A shriek of a laugh, sharp and cutting, escapes her and cuts into him.

"You know what really sucks, not-real-Jim?" She looks at him with squinted eyes and an upturned mouth. "I only get to see you outside of class when I'm drunk out of my mind, because then I can almost pretend it's how it used to be." She raises her eyebrows and whisper the last few words like a secret, a breath almost too soft to be heard. She leans back into her chair before raising another glass in her hand.

His hand catches her wrist before she's able to swallow the rest of her drink, and pries the glass out of her hands. She almost pouts at this, and he pays for the bill silently, before offering her an arm for her. She takes it, stumbles and walks across the floor before completely putting all her weight on his shoulder. He grunts at the extra weight, and scoops her into his arms before laying her in the back of his car. He closes the door and sits in the driver seat. Laying his hand on the keys before turning them, he looks back at the lightly snoring girl in the back row.

"I missed you too, Pam." He says to the air of the car, knowing the sleeping girl wouldn't hear, much less remember what he says. Then he turns the engine on, knowing he hasn't forgotten the directions to her apartment, and drives on the near empty roads.


	2. Chapter 2

august 2017

Office: office romance

A/N: so this is the prequel to my one-shot "Liquid Courage (or stupidity, whichever works)" but could be read as a stand alone. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the sorts.

Office Romance

By: Evelynhunters

Their story starts with shared smiles, hesitant glances, feeling (unrequited or not), and Pam's parents.

Pam Beasley only started to take environmental science when her parents urged her to have something other than art to fall on. She was pretty sure she would hate the class just by reputation alone (many people on the campus were aware of the strange behaviors of the teaching assistant) and Roy was in business and that sounded way more useful than 'environmental science'. The fact she was a freshman also didn't calm her nerves. But she heard it was easy and she needed something so her parents would get off her back.

She looks at her wrinkled schedule and her watch. Ten minutes early. Ten minutes early isn't that bad.

But instead of trees and plants all over the room what she finds in a room filled with paper and a virtually empty class except for two seats. Even from the doorway she could hear them bickering.

"Security in this college is a joke. Last year I came to work with my spud-gun in a duffel bag," a boy with glasses and a raised eyebrow tersely said, "I sat at my desk all day with a rifle that shoots potatoes at 60 pounds per square inch. Can you imagine if I was deranged?" The other boy next to him nodded mock-seriously and doesn't seem surprised or disapproving of his actions.

Yep. She was regretting this already. And by the tone of this guy's voice, she was pretty sure he was deranged.

"But Dwight, what if the security guards were secretly in on it? What if they're planning an entire envision on the campus, on this class, on you?" The other boy whispered while making a paranoid face.

"Of course not, Jim," Dwight started in a condescending tone. "It is every policemen's duty to protect. I, as sheriff deputy-"

"-Volunteer sheriff deputy-"

"Have taken a vow to only use my powers to protect the innocent, fight evil, and help those in need." Dwight finished with a stare and a face full of pride and duty.

"But what if they weren't really security guards, Dwight. What if they were pretending to be security guards so we would be comfortable and then attack mankind with cylons and-!" Jim's voice rose higher and higher and Dwight almost seemed like he believed him.

Pam can imagine her future now: No, Mr. Therapist, I don't believe it's my fault I'm insane. It's my parents' fault for making me take environmental science.

She must have signed or make some sort of a sound (or Dwight was really paranoid) because suddenly she snapped out of her day dream to find a potato hurling at her head (at sixty pounds per square inch, she recalls.)

She narrowly dodges the projectile, but the person behind her, the teaching assistant, wasn't so fortunate.

"OW! Dammit Dwight I told you to stop bringing the potato slinger to class!" Michael howled and clutched his nose.

"It's a spud gun." Dwight says as he races to Michael, shooting her a dirty look as if she were the one at fault.

She's regretting this so much it hurts.

She trudges back to where the other boy, Jim, sat, keeping on eye on Dwight at all times just in case he actually blamed her.

"I am so sorry," she hears behind her and turns around, "because you're never going to go back to the time before you met Dwight."

"Well, I wasn't going to forget about a potato either, so it's been a memorable first day." She smiles. Jim looked like one of those boy in high school who had floppy hair and was popular and good at sports. Like Roy but with a better haircut, she muses.

"Yeah," he chuckles, "he does that sometimes. I'm trying to convince him that all the security guards were Cylon Centurions."

"Cylon Centurions...like from..." Pam scoured her brain for what it was from, "from Battlestar Galactica?" She briefly remembers her sister hloving the show when they were young.

"Yeah," he said, surprised that she understood the reference, "he spends most of his time talking about beets, bears, and how the revival series of Battlestar Galactica wasn't as good as the original."

"It isn't!" They heard from across the room, "They made Starbuck into a girl!"

The few students shuffling in didn't even jump at the shouting. In fact, most of them looked like upperclassmen and were gray and depressed, like they were used to these kinds of antics.

"I'm Jim," he says with an awkward hand out in front of him to shake, "I'd invite you to sit next to us, but frankly you seem too nice and pretty for Dwight to ruin." He says with a lopsided grin.

Pretty? Boyfriend, Pam, you have a boyfriend, she reminded herself.

"I'm Pam," she says with a grin of her own to match and shakes his hand.


End file.
